Why Hustle Culture Is Toxic
What you should know about it.
Burnout is a state of emotional and mental exhaustion that a person reaches after overworking themselves for long hours. It is also caused by excessive and prolonged stress. This feeling of burnout can negatively affect people’s health and make them emotionally and physically incapable of doing any other activities in their daily lives. According to Koutsimani et al. 2019:
“burnout is composed of three dimensions i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, and lack of professional efficacy. In more particular, exhaustion refers to feelings of stress resulting from excessive work demands. The second dimension, depersonalization or cynicism, refers to an apathetic or detached attitude toward work in general and the people with whom one works; leading to the loss of interest in work, and the feeling that work has lost its meaning. Finally, lack of professional efficacy refers to reduced feelings of efficiency, successful attainment, and accomplishment both in one’s job and the organization.”
The lack of job satisfaction and lack of motivation by employers can also lead to burnout according to research. But why do people overwork themselves and how did the hustle culture contribute to this emotional devastation and burnout?
If you’re not working every minute of your day are you even working?
If you’re not being productive all day long, do you feel successful?
When was the last time you gave yourself a break and wanted to have a quiet time without doing anything?
Here is the issue with the hustle culture, no matter what you do and how much you make, you will never feel you’re respected enough. You will never feel it simply is enough.
This is a culture that focuses on overworking you day and night, weekday and weekend. Is there a taboo on taking a break?
This type of culture completely disregards your mental health and happiness and makes people feel like overworking is the only way to succeed in life.
Here is how the hustle culture feels like:
1-Striving for more and never feeling fulfilled with what you currently have.
2-Not striving for inner peace or feeding your spirit.
3-Always stressed out even if you have everything and you think you have nothing.
4- You do things to satisfy others and then yourself until you reach your breaking point.
School, work, family, bills, these are all important things in life to maintain our society. Working is an important part of our lives to keep us busy and to pay our bills. But the problem starts when we are overworking ourselves and start to push our limits by giving no breaks to ourselves. This will eventually burn many people out.
Here is what you need to consider:
1- Be more compassionate and empathetic towards yourself, not just others. In other words, love yourself enough and understand what you really need for your inner peace.
2- Get back to your hobbies or get a new one you’ve always wanted to do.
3- Spend more time with people you love.
4- Travel more, or plan more road trips.
There is a significant difference between hard work and constantly grinding with no breaks. If life feels like it is going very fast for you, take a little break and slow down to recharge and find your true passion.
References:
Koutsimani, P., Montgomery, A., & Georganta, K. (2019, March 13). The Relationship Between Burnout, Depression, and Anxiety: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in psychology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424886/.
Thank you for reading.
